O2 XDA IIs

The O2 XDA IIs is a close relative of the T-Mobile MDA III and features a similar slide-out keyboard, screen and hardware specifications. Like other O2 XDAs, it runs Windows.

The XDA IIs is actually an HTC Blue Angel Smartphone. HTC manufacture a variety of Windows-based devices for major carriers and a probably the biggest mobile manufacturer that nobody has ever heard of, supplying rebadged phones for O2, T-Mobile, Orange, Vodafone, i-Mate and Qtek.

It's a typical PDA-size phone at 125x72x19mm and 212 grams with a 240x320 pixel 65,000 colour touch-sensitive display, 802.11b wireless ethernet, quad-band GSM and GPRS. Talktime is quoted at four hours with up to 7 days standby.

Software is Windows Mobile 2003 Smartphone Edition, with 128Mb RAM. Memory expansion on the O2 XDA IIs is through MMC/SD cards, and the O2 XDA IIs supports SDIO peripherals. Of course the usual range of software is available on the Windows platform. Blackberry support for the XDA IIs is promised as an option sometime in early 2005.

The XDA IIs is expected to be available from October/November 2004. O2 have also promised a variant of this handset, dubbed the O2 XDA IIi (with a lowercase final "i") from early 2005 with a 1.3 megapixel camera and faster processor.